Prompt 1

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What are the beliefs associated with Conservatism?


Ben Leb -- Conservatism was born in 1790 when Edmund Burke published his Reflections on the Revolution in France. In this work, Burke decried the French Revolution as too radically republican and democratic.

  • According to Burke, Conservatism is marked by the perception that society is a contract wherein "the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade..." Burke held that the state was a partnership but one, "not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead and those who are to be born."
  • This partnership between the past, present and future citizens of a state and the past, present and future leaders of a state definitely rules out revolution, but does not preclude any change.
  • Therefore, a key tenant of conservatism is that gradual change is the only acceptable form of change within society

Another key figure in the conservative movement was the Austrian Foreign Minister, Prince Klemens von Metternich.

Brynn - General Conservative beliefs included:
  • hated revolutionary upheavals,
  • unwilling to accept either the liberal demands for civil liberties and representative governments or the nationalistic aspirations generated by the French revolutionary era
  • the community took precedence over individual rights
  • This philosophy was supported by hereditary monarchs, government bureaucracies, landowning aristocracies and revived churches.

  • Joseph de Maistre - Frenchman. Most influential spokesman for a counterrevolutionary and authoritarian conservatism. supported the restoration of hereditary monarchy, which he regarded as a divinely sanctioned institution. Only absolute monarchy could guarantee order in society.